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Australia
Australia 'is a poem by Michael Rosen from the book, ''You Wait Till I'm Older Than You. Transcript Australia. We went to Australia. It was a great time for beasties. They were all over us: ants, mosquitoes, spiders, stick insects, lizards, horse flies. Even for birds in Australia, fly out of the sky at you. You walk under a tree, where a magpie is nesting, and it dive bombs you. Neeeeeeeeowwwwwwww! You have to duck out of the way or you end up with a magpie stuck in your head! We went to stay in the bush. We were staying, in a little old house. Next door to the house was the outside toilet, and next door to that was another little old house where the children were going to sleep. First night we were there I said "Okay, off you go to the toilet, then off to your little house, and I'll come and tuck you in in a moment". I sat down to read something, when I heard this screaming noise from outside: "Weeeeeee! AAhHhhhhhh! OOooOyyyyy!" I rushed outside to see what was going on, and my kids were standing outside the toilet, screaming. "There's a spider in the toilet, dad!" I said, "I don't believe it. We've travelled all these thousands of miles and the first night we get there, all you can say is: there's a spider in the toilet, Dad" "No! Hahahahaha! It's horrible! It's going to eat us while we're doing it!" "Okay" I said, "I'll go in there, and have a look." I looked, up, down, round, behind. "No, no spider in there." "It's in, it's up on the wall. It's gonna drop on us while we're sitting there!" I said, "I tell you, there is no spider in there at all I was looking all around, no spider anyw-" And there it was! Up on the wall! A great, grey, furry thing, all quivery, its little beady eyes staring at me like it was growling. '''Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I started backing off, "Look kids, don't worry about it, just go in there, do what you gotta do and get out again", and they're pushing me back into the toilet, "No! Get rid of it Dad! It's gonna eat us!", So I said, "Okay. Okay. Of course I'm not scared. Look, I'll-I'll get rid of it, sure.” But as I got up to it I thought, how do you get rid of it? Hm? What do I do, go up to it and say, "Hi, yeah, we're just in from England, I'm Mike, these are my children. Errr, can we use your toilet? But it went on looking at me: egyghrgrhrhrhr. So I look round for something to get it with, and I found the toilet brush. Perfect. I know what I'll do. There's a gap between the top of the wall, and the roof. I'll flick it through the gap. So I started out towards it, stretching out with the toilet brush. Nothing hurried, nice and easy, don't want it to jump off the wall at me. Of course I’m not scared! I’m doing it aren’t I? It is me, hm? Then I reached with the end of the toilet brush and FLICK! Ha! That got rid of it. Over the top of the wall. Brilliant! I got rid of the spider! Yeah! Then I look down at the brush. There it was! Crawling up the handle of the brush towards my hand! “AAH! GET OFF! GET OFF! GET OFF!” I shook the brush like mad. “GET OFF!” That got rid of it. Whew. I don’t wanna be bothered like that again. Then, my son, Joe, says, “Dad!” “Hm?” “Yeah, look at your foot.” “Why, what’s the matter with it?” I look down. It’s sitting there on my bare foot! “YAGH, GET OFF! GET OFF! GET OOOOOF!” Whew. That got rid of it. Yeah, of course I wasn’t scared. No, of course not. The next night, we were sitting around having tea and my Eddy, now seven years old walks in from outside in his bare feet, “Dad! Dad! Quick! Over here! There’s a scorpion, over here!” Now, you know what scorpions are, don’t you? They’re like, little land lobsters with tail that curls right over from the back, and wobbles about in front of then as ZZZZ ZZZZZ ZZZZ, and they’ve got two big nippers that go, slicy, slicy, slicy and I said, Don't be silly Eddie, they don't, have, scorpions, in Australia. Do you think we would let you walk about in bare feet? If we knew they were scorpions here? You could tread on one of those, and next thing you know, it stings you, and your foot is swelling up like a football FFFFF, or even worse, you could sit on one of those things, and FFFF you could know about it? Believe me. "Dad... it's a scorpion. Come over here and have a look." I said I don't know what it is, but it's not a scorpion okay, they're unbelievably dangerous. One foot, on one of those and FFFF. "Dad! Listen to what I'm saying. It's a scorpion." I said, "Okay, you can have a look, but it won't be a scorpion, okay?" I went over, to have a look. STAND BACK EVERYBODY, STAND BACK, THAT IS REALLY DANGEROUS! That is, a scorpion. Yeah, yeah, that is what I was trying to tell you dad, NOBODY, GO ANYWHERE NEAR IT! And I look around for the biggest thing I could find, it turned out to be... Richard Scurrie's giantest a book, ever. I lifted up, above my head, and... BLAM! Right on it little bits of scorpion went flying it off in all directions. That wasn't very green of me, was it? Probably wrecked the food chain in the area for hundreds of years. Anyway, I swept the bits of scorpions out and I said to Eddie, "Lucky you didn't tread on that one foot on it and FFF. And he's nodding at me. Not saying anything. Next day he comes out when he says, “You know that scorpion from yesterday?” “Yeah” “I did tread on it.” “You trot on that scorpion?!” Yesterday?! Why didn’t you tell me at the time?!” And he just shrugged his shoulders and said,“I dunno.” Category:Poems Category:2017 Category:Michael Rosen Category:Poems from You Wait Till I’m Older Than You